Christmas Designs

Snowfall

Nathan Hall from First Christian Church of Union in Union, Missouri brings us this simple snowy stage design.

They used 36 strands of fishing string and about 900 cotton balls. They measured the distance between the ceiling and floor and cut the string to the appropriate lengths leaving a little extra on each one. Then they used some medium-sized sewing needles to run the line through 25 cotton balls per strand. They laid out a couple of strands on the floor at a time to make sure the cotton balls were spaced well and would look nice. Then they put one drop of glue on the bottom of the cotton balls so they would stay in place. They didn’t even wait for them to dry as there was enough resistance to keep them from sliding down the string. All of the strings were attached to the ceiling using thumb tacs. The large snowflakes were all made of leftover white Coroplast that they traced the design onto and cut out using box cutters. They attached the snowflakes directly to the black wall with command strips. They made 10 snowflakes in total each about 25′ from edge to edge. They used 6 American DJ Dotz par lights, 3 on each side to light the design. They also used 2 full strands (16.4 ft) of RGB LED tape on the bottom and some 4 channel decoders, all of which they already owned. All of the lighting was controlled via DMX and Jands vista v2.

The only thing they had to buy for this design was the cotton balls so it cost them 11 bucks.

If they hadn’t owned any of the supplies, this is what it would have cost.

  • Two 4×8 sheets of white Coroplast: $32
  • 900 Cotton Balls: $11
  • Fishing String: $5
  • 2 LED RGB strips: $54
  • Two 4 channel DMX decoders: $60
  • 6 American DJ Dotz pars: $900
  • Plus cables and lighting software.

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Motion. Everywhere. Silver Trees

2 responses to “Snowfall”

  1. Tony says:

    How far apart (L-R) did you hang the strands of cotton balls?

  2. Nathan Hall says:

    We spaced them anywhere between 8 and 13 inches apart. We wanted balance but not predictability. After we did the enitire right side we measured the distance between each strand and made them the same on the left side. Also, every other strand was close to the wall and the next strand would be about 8 inches from the wall. Basically so there was a little depth.

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